Thinking with Objects offers a fresh view of the transformation that took place in mechanics during the 17th century. By giving center stage to objectslevers, inclined planes, beams, pendulums, springs, and falling and projected bodiesDomenico Bertoloni Meli provides a unique and comprehensive portrayal of mechanics as practitioners understood it at the time. Bertoloni Meli reexamines such major texts as Galileo's Discourses Concerning Two New Sciences, Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, and Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, and in them finds a reliance on objects that has escaped proper understanding. From Pappus of Alexandria to Guidobaldo dal Monte, Bertoloni Meli sees significant development in the history of mechanical expression, all of them crucial for understanding Galileo. Bertoloni Melo uses similarities and tensions between dal Monte and Galileo as a springboard for exploring the revolutionary nature of mechanics. Examining objects helps us appreciate the shift from the study to the practice of mechanics and challenges artificial dichotomies between practical and conceptual pursuits, mathematics, and experiment.
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Beyond Inertia: From Laws to Objects2. Motion and Mechanics3. The Role of Mathematics4. Experience and Experiment5. Practitioners, Sites, and Forms of Communication6. Structure and Organization of the Present Work1. Machines in the Field, in the Book, and in the Study1.1. Between Classical Theory and Engineering Practice1.2. Machines, Equilibrium, and Motion1.3. The Balance of dal Monte and the Problem of Rigor1.4. Pulleys and the Contingency of Matter1.5. Rival Traditions on the Inclined Plane2. Floating Bodies and a Mathematical Science of Motion2.1. Some Features of Archimedes' Floating Bodies2.2. Reading Floating Bodies2.3. Benedetti against the Philosophers2.4. Galileo's Early Speculations2.5. Mazzoni, Stevin, and Galileo3. The Formulation of New Mathematical Sciences3.1. The Broadening of the Mechanical Tradition3.2. Galileo at Padua and the Science of Motion3.3. From Buoyancy to the Science of Waters3.4. Motion between Heaven and Earth3.5. The Science of the Resistance of Materials3.6. The Science of Motion4. Novel Reflections and Quantitative Experiments4.1. Different Readings of Galileo4.2. Mersenne's Harmonie and the Dialogo4.3. Rethinking Galileo's Axiomatic Structure4.4. Continuity and the Law of Fall4.5. Trials with Projectiles, Pierced Cisterns, and Beams4.6. The Experiments and Tables of Riccioli5. The Motion and Collision of Particles5.1. The Rise of the Mechanical Philosophy5.2. Mechanics and the Mechanical Philosophy5.3. Beeckman, Galileo, and Descartes5.4. Motion and Its Laws5.5. From the Balance to Impact: Beeckman, Marci, and Descartes5.6. The Workings of the Cartesian UniverseIntermezzo: Generational and Institutional Changes6. The Equilibrium and Motion of Liquids6.1. A Characterization of a Research Tradition6.2. Studies around the Time of the Cimento Academy6.3. Pressure and Equilibrium in Pascal and Boyle6.4. Studying the Motion of Waters North of the Alps6.5. Guglielmini and the Bologna Scene6.6. Experiments Combining Pressure and Speed7. Projected, Oscillating, and Orbiting Bodies7.1. The Tools of Investigation7.2. The Analyses of Orbital Motion by Fabri and Borelli7.3. Falling Bodies on a Moving Earth7.4. Projectiles and Air Resistance7.5. Huygens's Pendulum7.6. English Approaches to Orbital Motion8. Colliding Bodies, Springs, and Beams8.1. The Emergence of Elasticity8.2. Boyle and Elasticity8.3. The Transformation of the Impact Rules8.4. Springs between Technology and Cosmology8.5. Bending and Breaking Beams9. A New World-System9.1. Teamwork and Anti-Cartesianism9.2. Halley, Wren, Hooke, and Newton9.3. The Principia's Structure and Conceptual Framework9.4. The Role of Experiments9.5. The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy9.6. A New World-System: Newton and Flamsteed10. Causes, Conservation, and the New Mathematics10.1. Mechanics at the Turn of the Century10.2. The New Analysis10.3. Conservation10.4. Early Responses to Newton's Principia10.5. The New Analysis and Newton's PrincipiaConclusion: Mapping the Transformations of MechanicsNotesReferencesIndex
""Thinking with Objects is a significant book. Its success lies in reformulating our ideas of the methods and practices of early modern sciences... No serious future study of early modern physics and its transformations will be able to ignore the analyses and conclusions of this work.""
